Sarasota bookstore gives stock away in final days

It’s not just the name of the used bookstore she owns with her husband, Patrick. It’s something that she’s believed with her whole heart even as devices and ebooks have threatened the print industry.

And it’s something that had 42 people waiting outside on Wednesday when the final chapter of their family business was about to begin.

The Spencers announced in a Facebook post at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday that they’d be giving away the roughly 30,000 books in their store at 3251 17th St. near Lockwood Ridge Road. Customers were invited to come in and take whatever they could carry for whatever they wanted to pay.

The couple had two weeks left on their lease, and it was either that or carry the load out themselves. Sarasota readers were more than willing to lend a hand. That initial announcement has since been viewed more than 300,000 times and shared more than 2,900 times. Wednesday morning books were leaving the store by the armload and the trunkload.

It was an emotional morning for the Spencers, but an oddly satisfying one.

Leigh Spencer had heard so many times that books were out of style, and this felt like proof that wasn’t necessarily true. People still love the smell of paper and ink. There’s an intimacy and a reverence with those pages, she said, that just doesn’t happen with an e-reader.

That passion hasn’t been lost in the shift to devices, but selling that passion is a whole ‘nother story.

The couple has been trying to sell the bookstore since September, and potential buyers have been hard to come by.

Something About a Book has had three other owners and a few different names since it first opened in 1992. The sign on the store still says Jan’s Paperbacks, but the Spencers have run the shop and used it to home-school their children for about three years. A small booth sits behind the counter where Oliver, 11, Trustin, 9, and Gracenne, 6, learned their lessons in between customers.

The bookstore actually gained popularity in the time that the family owned it, Leigh said, and it started to put a strain on the home schooling. The Spencers had to choose between the two, and their children won without question. They began making plans to open a Cajun creole food truck, which would have more flexible hours and allow more time to teach their children.

The liquidation sale kicked off in May. The $2 prices helped more than 10,000 books leave the store. They were also in talks with a potential buyer until Monday, and then that deal fell through.

For about a day, Leigh Spencer felt defeated.

But that’s not how this story ends.

If she couldn’t have a buyer to carry on the business, she wanted the books to go to people who cared about them.

The Facebook post brought in an army’s worth of book lovers, teachers, parents and even one man who traveled all the way from Miami to stuff his trunk with the Spencers’ collection.

She’d still like to see the right buyer show up and save the store in its final hour.

But for the moment, she’s reveling in the small victory that even after everything there’s “something about a book.”